Friday, January 31, 2014

Educating on Roe vs. Wade a “must do” for 2014

Editor’s note. The following “President’s message” from Right to
Life’s President Barb Listing appeared in the Spring edition of RTL of
Michigan News.Another
year begins and the U.S. Supreme Court rulings legalizing abortion are
still in place, although much altered since 1973. Those of us who
remember that January 22, 1973, day when the Court handed down Roe v.
Wade can likely describe the key points of this fateful decision. That
day altered our lives and our nation’s public policies and politics.
While we know so well what the words “Roe v. Wade” mean, many of our
fellow citizens do not. Some 2013 research from the Pew Research Center
provides some interesting information regarding what the public knows
and does not know about this infamous U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Data from the Pew Research Center reveals:

Only about 6 in 10 citizens know that Roe v. Wade dealt with abortion.

Our “must do” list for 2014 needs to include investing time for basic
education on the 1973 abortion cases. If only a slight majority of
people associate abortion with Roe v. Wade, how far would that
percentage drop if they were asked about the companion case, Doe v.
Bolton? That is the 1973 case that expanded the Roe decision to create
abortion on demand.
See our website www.RTL.org for a refresher on the decisions.
Through our legislative work and our public education outreach,
especially in schools and on campuses, opportunities will be created in
2014 to ensure that our fellow citizens realize the damage done to our
nation and families by the original 1973 abortion decisions: Roe v. Wade
and Doe v. Bolton. Misinformation and lack of information become
roadblocks which must be removed as we work to reverse these court
decisions. Are there any other court decisions which have reached the
same vast proportion of deaths? 56 million deaths of unborn babies and a
number growing daily.
May 2014 see our Michigan prolife movement grow and flourish as we
continue to work together to protect innocent human life. Let’s start
with spreading the truth about the disastrous decisions of January 22,
1973, given to us by 7 men on the U.S. Supreme Court.

By Dr. Peter SaundersEditor’s note. Dr. Saunders is a former general surgeon and is
CEO of Christian Medical Fellowship, a UK-based organization with 4,500
UK doctors and 1,000 medical students as members.

John Halligan

The Irish ‘Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act’, signed into law
last July, will allow abortions to be carried out where there is a
threat to the life of the mother.
It does not, however, allow abortion for fatal fetal abnormalities.
Campaigners in Ireland are now seeking to change this and are up to their usual tricks of inflating statistics.
On 13 November the Irish Journal reported on a campaign by a group
called ‘Terminations for Medical Reasons’ (TFMR) who argued that 1,500
Irish women per year carried babies with fatal fetal abnormalities:

‘About 1,500 cases of fatal fetal
abnormalities are reported each year in Ireland with about 80 per cent
of the women travelling abroad for early inducement or terminations.
Members of TFMR were devastated of the omission from the legislation
this year but vowed to take their cases to Europe and beyond.’

80% of 1,500 is 1,200! Given that around 4,000 Irish women have
abortions in England and Wales each year this would suggest that almost
one third of them are having them for fatal fetal abnormalities. That
sounds a wee bit high to me.

So where did this figure of 1,500 come from? The earliest reference
to it that I can find seems to be from the same group (TFMR) on 27 May
this year, reported in Breaking News Ireland.
Since this time it appears to have been picked up uncritically by the Irish media.
According to the Irish Times on 26 June, during the debate over the
bill, Independent TD John Halligan ‘pointed out’ that 1,500 women in
Ireland each year had to deal with a pregnancy where the baby would live
for just minutes outside the womb (emphasis mine).
The figure was repeated uncritically by the Irish Examiner a day later.
To my knowledge not one of these news outlets has since retracted nor
corrected the claim, with the exception of the Irish Independent who
published an article by Niamh Ui Bhriain of The Life Institute on 25
November debunking the false statistics.

This encouraged us to obtain the statistics for Irish women having
abortions in England and Wales for fatal fetal abnormalities from the
Department of Health (DoH). According to the above there should have
been 80% of 1,500 or about 1,200 each year.

So how many were there? According to the DoH Ground E abortions
(those for fetal abnormality) for the years 2007 to 2011 were 27, 29,
42, 68 and 51 respectively.
But how many of these were for fatal abnormalities where, by John
Halligan’s definition, the baby ‘would live for just minutes outside the
womb’?

We are not told this specifically but we can make a reasonable estimate from the data available.
Of the 51 ground E abortions in 2011, 60% (31 in total) were for
chromosomal abnormalities including Down’s syndrome (11), Edward’s
syndrome (7) and Patau’s syndrome (7).
Of these the latter two conditions are very serious. Half of infants
with Edward’s syndrome do not survive beyond the first week of life. The
median lifespan is 5–15 days. About 8% of infants survive longer than
one year.

More than 80% of children with Patau’s syndrome die within the first year of life.
Today the average life expectancy for a person with Down’s syndrome
is between 50 and 60. A considerable number of people with Down’s
syndrome live into their 60′s.
So, even given the fact that these are all life-limiting conditions,
it is extremely unlikely that any of these 31 babies, if born, would
have died within minutes of birth.
There were 12 babies aborted for a range of other conditions
including spina bifida (3) and cardiovascular disease (2). It would
expected that most of these also would not die within minutes of birth.
Unlike those babies with chromosomal abnormalities most of this group
would be amenable to treatment of one kind or another.

The only category where the babies might arguably have fitted
Halligan’s definition of ‘fatal’ was anencephaly. There were 8 abortions
on Irish women for this condition in 2011.
55% of babies with anencephaly, who are not aborted, do not survive
birth. If they are not stillborn, then they will usually die within a
few hours or days after birth from cardiorespiratory arrest, although
there are exceptional cases of babies with the condition surviving up to
two or three years.
So let’s say that about half of those with anencephaly, about 4 in
2011, would fall into Halligan’s category of being stillborn or dying
within minutes of birth.

That’s four versus Halligan’s figure of 1,200. So the TD was out by a factor of 300!
I am not in any way trying to suggest that carrying a baby that has a
disability to term is not a huge challenge which requires great
courage, grace and support.
But if we are to have this debate at all, then we must have it based
on the actual facts of the case, and not with reference to wildly spun
statistics that have been simply plucked out of the air to advance a
certain political agenda.

Telling lies in parliament is serious. If John Halligan didn’t know
they were lies then he is rather gullible and probably also incompetent.
If he did then it is a very serious matter indeed.
I wonder if he will be called to account for it? And I wonder if the Irish media will keep propagating his untruths?
This appeared at http://pjsaunders.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-12-21T11:47:00-08:00&max-results=7

The Human Cloning Goal Behind Stem Cell Cures

By Wesley J. Smith

A mouse embryo injected with cells made pluripotent through stress, tagged with a fluorescent protein.Photo: Haruko Obokata

Buried deep in an encouraging story about another advance in turning
skin cells into stem cells, we see more evidence of biotechnology’s
ultimate human cloning goal.
First, the good news. An acid bath may be able to replace viruses in
transforming skin cells into stem cells that can become any type of cell
in the body. From the Nature News story:

“In 2006, Japanese researchers
reported a technique for creating cells that have the embryonic ability
to turn into almost any cell type in the mammalian body — the now-famous
induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. In papers published this week in
Nature, another Japanese team says that it has come up with a
surprisingly simple method — exposure to stress, including a low pH —
that can make cells that are even more malleable than iPS cells, and do
it faster and more efficiently.”

Excellent. Ethical stem cell research that avoids using embryos should be celebrated.
But deeper in the story, the ultimate agenda surfaces. These
cells–unlike embryonic and IPS cells made with viruses–can be turned
into placental cells.
So?

“That could make cloning dramatically
easier, says [Teruhiko] Wakayama. Currently, cloning requires
extraction of unfertilized eggs, transfer of a donor nucleus into the
egg, in vitro cultivation of an embryo and then transfer of the embryo
to a surrogate.”

That’s somatic cell nuclear transfer, the process that led to Dolly, and has now successfully created embryos in humans:

“If STAP [Stimulus-Triggered
Acquisition of Pluripotency] cells can create their own placenta, they
could be transferred directly to the surrogate.

“Wakayama is cautious, however, saying that the idea is currently at ‘dream stage.’”.

Revealing that for all the discussion of cures and testing–which
scientists certainly seek–I believe human cloning remains the ultimate
goal of the sector.
Why? That’s when the real genetic tinkering, transhuman religious recreationism, and other Brave New World fun could begin.Editor’s note. This appeared on Wesley’s great blog.

Over the years we’ve talked multiple times about abortionist Steven Brigham, including Tuesday (“Abortion apologists try to shift blame for notorious abortionists from themselves to pro-lifers”).
We write about him because he’s lost his license in multiple states, is
accused of maiming who knows how many women, and is Houdini-like in his
ability to escape sanctions.
Of course our opposite numbers also care about the women Brigham (and
the abortionists who’ve worked for him in four states) are accused of
injuring and exploiting. But there is another reason they have written
more of late about Brigham, who is fighting yet again to get his
suspended New Jersey license reinstated: Kermit Gosnell. His three
murder convictions were the worse black eye the abortion industry has
suffered in decades. They must distance themselves from the man who
operated the “House of Horrors.”
Contrary to what the Planned Parenthoods insist, Gosnell and Brigham,
two peas in a pod, are not the only abortionists who are unskilled,
untrained, and uncaring. This uncomfortable truth (for the abortion
industry) is admitted near the end of Eyal Press’s 10,000-word-long
story, “Steven Brigham’s abortion clinics keep being sanctioned for
offering substandard care. Why is he still in business?” which appears
in the current New Yorker.
As we talked about Tuesday, the first of Press’ self-assigned tasks
is to demonstrate that it’s really the fault of pro-lifers that the
likes of Brigham and Gosnell exist. Here’s Press’s explanation of how it
all came to pass:

“The caricature of clinics as
‘abortion mills’ run by venal profiteers has long been a staple of the
anti-abortion movement. As a result, pro-choice activists understood the
potential dangers of drawing attention to any facility that might
reinforce this stereotype. One clinic director told me, ’We know the
anti-choice community will manipulate any story, however minor, to paint
the entire abortion-care community with the same brush.’ Politicians
could cite such stories as justification for imposing burdensome
regulations. Yet clinic owners also knew that some providers saw what
they did as a business, not as a social mission. As reputable doctors,
hospitals, and medical schools increasingly distanced themselves from
abortions, it became more likely that substandard providers would fill
the void.”

If I understand her point, pro-lifers’ accusations were
self-fulfilling prophecies. Label abortion clinics “abortion mills” and
suddenly “substandard providers” will “fill the void” left when the
“good people” leave or never get into the trade.
Really? Not to belabor the point, but quacks have been a part of the
abortion trade going back to the first days after Roe v. Wade and Doe v.
Bolton were handed down. Think about what you have to do in abortion
and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it attracts those kinds of people.
And those predators exist today. Look at what self-described
“pro-choicers” who at one time worked for Planned Parenthood of Delaware
recently said.
Nurse Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich testified that there are some
“startling similarities between the situation with Planned Parenthood of
Delaware and Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s clinic in Philadelphia.” What were
those similarities? “Both operated extremely hazardous abortion clinics
and their respective states refused to close them despite repeated warnings,” according to the News Journal. (Emphasis mine)
Another similarity—uncannily like what is you read not just about
Gosnell but also in Press’ account about Brigham—is the behavior of
abortionist Thomas Liveright. Mitchell-Werbrich told columnist Kristen
Powers that she saw him

“’slapping a patient,’ and placing
patients on ‘operating tables still wet with the blood from the previous
patient.’ He refused to wear sterilized gloves during procedures and
would sing ‘hymns about sin to girls during the painful dilation phase
of an abortion’ and play ‘Peek-A-Boo’ with patients. She said he ‘rushed
abortions’ and allowed ‘sedated patients to wander down [the street]
dazed and confused.’”

There’s much more, but let’s go back to Press’s question: why do the
likes of Steven Brigham (and Kermit Gosnell and Thomas Liveright and who
knows how many others) stay in business?
The initial cover story in Press’ account is, as we wrote Tuesday,
that it’s difficult to air dirty laundry in public when the
“anti-abortion movement” caricatures clinics “as “’abortion mills’ run
by venal profiteers.” In other words, in almost all cases they won’t
tell authorities no matter how horribly these guys act for fear of
giving “ammunition” to pro-lifers.
But, truth be told, if you read Press carefully, you can divine five
reasons that have nothing to do with pro-lifers, all of which reflect
badly on pro-abortionists.#1. The aforementioned cowardice. If you read others
stories (especially about how abortion advocates went out of their way
not to blow the whistle on Gosnell), you’d think there was a virtual
army of “abortion rights advocates” trying to get Brigham out of the
abortion trade. There weren’t that many. More common was the response of
equally notorious abortionist LeRoy Carhart, who specializes in late,
late abortions.
Carhart recalls for Press meeting Brigham at an National Abortion Federation meeting, in the early 1990s

“’He came and asked me if I would
train him to do second- and third-trimester abortions.’ After learning
that Brigham had limited experience doing first-trimester abortions,
Carhart cautioned him against the idea. Privately, he was taken aback:
‘He seemed like a nice person, but I was amazed that somebody would, you
know, want to learn how to fly a jumbo jet before he learned how to fly
an airplane.’”

If, as even Press admits, the dangers (to the woman) increase the
later in pregnancy the baby is aborted, if you really cared about women
(as Carhart insists he does), why wouldn’t you move heaven and earth to
stop a man who is not even a gynecologist?

#2. It is not pro-life state authorities who turn a
blind eye to the Brighams and Gosnells. As we wrote repeatedly in our
coverage of Gosnell, the 261-page Grand Jury report was a searing
indictment of the Department of Health, the Philadelphia Department of
Public Health, the Department of State, and fellow doctors, especially
those at nearby hospitals who treated Gosnell’s victims.
What Gosnell was doing was not a mystery, not cloaked away in
anonymity. There were plenty of people who knew and who could have shut
down Gosnell. They chose not to for a host of reasons, including “for
political reasons,” to quote the Grand Jury. (That’s a reference to when
a pro-abortionist became governor of Pennsylvania.)
Making sure there were no “barriers” to women seeking abortions was not only Job #1, it was the only job.
Read Press’s story and you find example after example after example
of Brigham wriggling out of corners, brazenly evading state laws and
orders from medical authorities. It is impossible to believe that if
they really wanted to, they could not have put Brigham permanently out
of business.
On the other hand, Press’s story lets the cat out of the bag. Not
long after New York revoked his license in 1994, the New Jersey Board of
Medical Examiners prepared to render judgment on whether it should
revoke Brigham’s license, too.
Brigham, naturally told an administrative-law judge that, well, these
things happen in what Press euphemistically calls “advanced-gestation
abortions.” Who knows what would have happened if it were Brigham’s word
alone, but, Press writes, he lined up

“Michael Policar, a respected
gynecologist and a former national spokesperson for Planned Parenthood,
[who] testified on Brigham’s behalf. The injuries that the New York
board had attributed to negligence, Policar said, could have happened to
patients ‘in the best of hands.’ (Policar told me that he had reviewed
the medical records for only two patients, and had never vouched for
Brigham’s general competence.) Several other physicians offered similar
testimony.”

The judge ruled in Brigham’s favor. Press has other stories coming
out of Maryland of colossal indifference to women or a resolute
inability (unwillingness?) to follow through to keep Brigham and his
associates from flimflamming what minimal laws on abortion existed in
Maryland.

#3. Brigham could sell ice cubes to Eskimos.
Handsome, youthful looking, a former athlete, he oozed charisma and
sincerity in his interviews with Press, who admits she was almost taken
in.

“Brigham was cordial and
ingratiating, and he never raised his voice. He seemed so convinced of
the purity of his intentions and the bad faith of his detractors—they
were either protesters or competitors, he said—that, while he spoke, it
became difficult to imagine otherwise.”

Brigham deflected every criticism of his outrageous behavior,
attributing it to those crazy pro-lifers or his greedy competitors. The
syllogism goes something like this.

Pro-lifers are awful and liars to boot.
Pro-lifers accuse Brigham (and his associates) of treating pregnant women horribly.
Thus Brigham must be innocent, since pro-lifers are liars.

Or, as Press puts it, Brigham would have you believe he “was a
dedicated doctor, and the zealotry of the religious right was
responsible for his troubles.” Of course, there is not a shred of truth
to this bogus evasion.

#4. What else explains why women go to the likes of
Brigham (besides those awful pro-lifers and “unnecessary” laws)? Shame.
They believe they deserve this because of the “stigma” of abortion.
Yet the middle class professional Press uses to illustrate that it is
not just poor women who are exploited by Brigham– while “passionately
pro-choice”—is” embarrassed” not by pro-lifers but by the fact that
she’d already had an abortion.

“I’m twenty-eight years old, and I can’t figure it out yet?”

Finally

#5. Brigham is invincibly confident, self-assured, a
man who never gets rattled. The
rationales/justifications/rationalizations he offers Press sound eerily
like what Gosnell told reporter Steve Volk after he was convicted. They
transform themselves into martyrs to a higher cause, incapable of seeing
(or at least admitting) the trail of victims they leave in their wake.
I disagree completely with Volk that Gosnell’s “case is more complicated than most media portrayals allow.’

But he could have been speaking of Brigham when he concluded, “Yet,
up close, his story is worse than we knew—a lesson in how
self-righteousness and cold rationalizations blur distinctions between
man and monster.”

“Gimme Shelter” and the art of battling giants

By Dave Andrusko

Vanessa Hudgens as Agnes “Apple” Bailey

I was wrapping up work yesterday when my wife, Lisa, shot me an
email. Did I want to go see “Gimme Shelter” at the local AMC multiplex?

Of course! We’d run Brent Bozell’s laudatory review of Ronald
Krauss’s film that stars Vanessa Hudgens as Agnes “Apple” Bailey (see “You’re Right to Choose This Movie”), and I was eager to see if this film the director insists Hollywood didn’t want made could live up to Mr. Bozell’s kudos.
Last night was another bitterly cold end to the kind of day many
states have endured (and far worse). I got to the parking lot early and
while waiting for Lisa I listened to the audio book of Malcolm
Gladwell’s latest work, “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the
Art of Battling Giants.”
The section I heard was about a teenage Canadian girl who had been
abducted while walking home and killed. By the time we walked into the
door I was doubly primed: a pro-lifer witnessing an unabashedly pro-life
film and someone who had just been reminded how fleeting life can be,
how dangerous even life in a “safe” area can be, let alone on the
streets. Talk about prophetic.

Now, of course, just because a film has recognizable stars—Hudgens,
Brendan Fraser, James Earl Jones, and Rosario Dawson—doesn’t mean the
usual media suspects won’t dismiss it as cheesy and preachy and (as the
New York Post review put it) “a clunky movie that feels as if it’s
underwritten by the Roman Catholic Church.”

Is “Gimme Shelter” as good as Bozell concluded or as off-the-rack as the Post reviewer determined? Let’s see.
Apple Bailey is a sixteen year old living with her junkie mother
(played by Rosario Dawson) in a hellhole. As we later learn she’d been
taken away as a child and had lived in 12 foster homes before being
returned to her mother. When “Gimme Shelter begins,” Apple is cutting
her hair and telling herself, “You can do this!” Escape.

Over the violent protestations of her mother, she races out the door.
She makes her way to the home of the father she has never seen (Tom
played by Brendan Fraser) and his wife Joanna (played by Stephanie
Szostak) where she brazenly tells them she just needs a place to stay
for a while to get her life together and then she’ll be gone.

The encounter with her rich father and his wife and two young
children is as awkward as you expect it to be. An already tenuous
situation grows exponentially worse when they find out she is pregnant.
The film’s narrative heart and soul is how Apple overcomes the forces
that are pushing her to abort. She is rescued by a Catholic priest
(James Earl Jones), is brought to a home for teen mothers based on the
real-life experience of Kathy DiFiore, the founder of Several Sources
Shelters, where she discovers in Kathy and her housemates the family she
has never had.
But what makes “Gimme Shelter” just an awesome film is that it is
also a story of forgiveness and redemption. Fraser, as her birth father,
was a lout for abandoning her mother and hasn’t changed much in the
ensuing years.
His manipulative advice to Apple–after her pregnancy is confirmed and her response–is the movie’s linchpin:
“It’s time you turn the page on this, move forward, and before you
know it; you will have forgotten that it ever happened.” In a word,
abort.
Not missing the irony, Apple responds, “Turn the page, like you did with me.”
That memory of abandonment—and the ultrasounds photos of her baby
that she’d been given and kept in her shoe—provide her with the moral
resources to run out of the abortion clinic at the last possible minute.
She is not going to abandon her baby, as Joanna had abandoned Apple to
the abortion clinic’s tender mercies.
But just as Apple’s hard shell of survival mechanisms soften as she
experiences the love of the young women at the shelter, so, too, does
Tom as he gets to know his daughter. Apple reads the one correspondence
she’d ever had from her father and it is a familiar story: young, wasn’t
ready to be father, didn’t want to disappoint his family.
By the end of the film, her father lovingly embraces Apple’s new
baby, whom she has appropriately named “Hope.” The reason I have always
loved Fraser as an actor is that his expressive face shows not just
pain, but pain that is the expression of hurt deep in the soul.
His character knows how horribly he failed Apple and Apple’s mother.
He is trying to do his best to make up for his act of cowardice 17 years
before.

Jones as Fr. McCarthy and Ann Dowd as Kathy DiFiore avoid the trap of
coming off as plaster saints. They are deeply devout and dedicated to
helping these young women and their babies, but their responses a couple
of times almost make you cringe. Faced with a defiant and belligerent
Apple, those are the kind of responses I suspect you and I might make.

Likewise the young women in the shelter (my wife tells me some of the
actresses actually were clients at a shelter) have the baggage that
comes with living disorganized lives, and at least one deeply resents
having to help Kathy raise money for the shelter. In a “cheesy”
“preachy” movie, everyone would be flawless, running over with gratitude
for a warm bed and a hot meal, and incapable of saying anything
problematic.

Krauss told Anne Morse that he got the idea for the film a few years ago while visiting his brother.
“One of DiFiore’s shelters was about a mile from his brother’s house,
and he decided to pay it a visit,” Morse wrote. “’I knocked on the door
and introduced myself, and saw what was going on. I actually borrowed
Kathy’s video camera and started interviewing the girls.’ Krauss visited
again and again, and one day he encountered a young girl ‘who had
walked about 25 miles to get there in freezing weather with no jacket.
And she was three months pregnant.’”

Hudgens prepared for the role, Keith Fournier notes, by “living in
crisis pregnancy shelters, spending time with the heroic mothers who
overcame great odds to choose the life of their children.” Fraser
quietly donated his salary to the shelter.

Which brings me full circle back to the audio book. Shelters like
Kathy DiFiore’s not only save the lives of countless babies, they have
rescued young women and given them a chance against all odds. After she
ran away from her mother, Apple was reduced to eating food she’d
snatched out of garbage containers and sleeping in cars whose owners had
left them unlocked. Without the love and assistance of Fr. McCarthy and
Kathy DiFiore, it’s not difficult to guess her fate.

There were only a handful of people at the theatre last night to
watch “Gimme Shelter”; my guess is, given the weather, none of the 18
films showing had more than a few dozen patrons.
But the symbolism was hard to miss. In a cold, hard world, where
unmarried pregnant teens come under siege to abort, it is that saving
remnant who reaches out to them that will save both them and their
little ones.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

New York State Assembly Passes Abortion-Expansion Legislation

Pro-abortion New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo

On Monday the New York State Assembly passed the ‘Women’s Equality
Act,’ once again sending the legislation to the New York State Senate.

Last year, despite support in both the Assembly and the Senate for
nine of the ten points, the Assembly held the nine points hostage in
favor of the abortion-expanding tenth point.
“There is nothing empowering to women about bringing
abortion-on-demand up to the moment of birth to New York,” said Lori
Kehoe, Executive Director of New York State Right to Life. “In a day and
age when females can be killed in utero simply for the crime of not
being male, it is a mockery of what our feminist foremothers stood for
to try and force this on New Yorkers. Women’s rights must begin in the
womb, or women have no rights at all.”

The tenth point of the Women’s Equality Act, the point of contention
between the Assembly and the Senate, would expand access to abortion
through all nine months of pregnancy for essentially any reason, would
allow non-doctors to perform these surgical procedures, and provides no
conscience protections for medical professionals opposed to taking human
life.
Throughout the second trimester, late abortions can be completed by
dismembering the developed unborn child, even when they can feel pain,
pulling the baby out piece by piece until the mother’s uterus is empty.
After the abortion, the abortionist must reassemble the child’s body to
ensure nothing has been left inside the child’s mother.

In abortions that take place later in pregnancy, which would be
legalized in New York by the abortion-expanding Women’s Equality Act,
often babies are killed by sliding a needle filled with a chemical
agent, such as digoxin, into the beating heart, before being delivered.
“Like the majority of New Yorkers, we oppose expanding
abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy. We stand strong
in supporting the right of every individual to have that first right,
the right to life,” added Kehoe. “New York’s daughters deserve better
than abortion.”

Wednesday night, the husband and mother of the late Marlise Munoz gave CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360°
an exclusive interview chronicling the events that led up to Marlise’s
ultimate death, along with that of her pre-born daughter, earlier this
week.

The interview primarily vilifies the Texas law that required Marlise
to be kept on life support until her baby, whom Marlise was still
gestating in her “brain dead” state, had reached viability, and Cooper
focused little on the fact that Marlise had been pregnant.
Below is an excerpt of the transcript.

COOPER: So the doctors initially didn’t even — didn’t know about this law.

MUNOZ: No. Actually, we were called back into her room in ICU. And
the doctor told us about this. And of course, we’re like no, we want
to disconnect her. And his words were, we were asking for an
explanation. His words, he’s like I’m sorry, I just found out about
this law five minutes before you did. I’ve been told to notify you of
it.

COOPER: When they told you this, I mean, this is the worst thing
that could possibly happen to you. You’re in this horrific situation.
And you’ve made this difficult decision based on conversations that
you’ve had with your wife, with your daughter in the past. What goes
through your head when a doctor says we’re not going to follow your
wishes?

MACHADO: For me, I thought there must have been a miscommunication
of some way. We said no, no, no, no, that’s not what she wanted. She
wanted never to be on life support. And that’s when they’re saying,
well, but she’s pregnant, and then it went from there. So we knew we
weren’t going to let this rest. Because it wasn’t right. It was not
honoring her wishes.

COOPER: I think a lot of people think, well, maybe if you had had
something in writing, that would have made a difference, if she had
written down if there was an advanced directive or something. But under
this Texas law, even if it’s in writing, it gets overridden.

MACHADO: Exactly. Exactly.

MUNOZ: She could have been detailed everything exactly how this happened, detailed it, and it wouldn’t have mattered.

COOPER: There are some families in that situation who think, well,
maybe she can come back from this. Maybe a miracle can happen.

MUNOZ: I mean, we still held the hope. I mean, I did. I can say I
did. But for me, it was, at least for me, I couldn’t turn off the
knowledge that I know of what was going on. And even though I did want
to keep the hope — and you — it’s my wife. I’d do anything. I, many a
nights that I asked God to take me instead. But you can’t turn off that
knowledge that you know how bad it was. And like I said, I promised
her. I told her. I will honor your wishes. For me and her dad, that
was the hardest. Because we looked her in the eye and told her. And
for the state of Texas to not let us do that was hard. You want to keep
your word to your loved one.

The abortion lobby took a keen interest in the case, and NARAL Pro-Choice America even created a petition asking
Attorney General Greg Abbott to address the purported discrepancy
between Marlise’s end-of-life wishes as her husband recounted them, and
the Texas law that protects the children of pregnant women who are
pronounced “brain dead” until they are viable and can be given a chance
at life outside the womb (this normally takes place around 24 weeks).

Marlise’s wishes were not documented on paper, and whether or not she
would have wanted to be disconnected from her ventilator knowing that
it would have prematurely ended her child’s life is unclear. (Brain
death as “death” is a development of the early 1980s, and is
highly-controversial because its diagnosis can, legally, vary greatly
between physicians and hospitals.)

The life affirming film ‘Gimme Shelter’ is a must-see tear-jerker

On Saturday I went to see the new movie Gimme Shelter.
I heard a positive radio review that highlighted the film’s
life-affirming perspective. I knew the movie was based on a true story
of a pregnant homeless teen who fought to save the life of her child.
The main character in the film, Apple, played by High School Musical
star Vanessa Hudgens, leaves her drug-addicted mother on a journey to
find her biological father, Tom Fitzpatrick, played by Brenden Fraser.
Apple’s attempts at reconciling with her father seemingly fail after
he discovers she’s pregnant. She ends up in a troubling situation that
leads to a meeting with a priest played by James Earl Jones. The priest
ends up offering Apple hope by bringing her to a shelter for teen moms.
Although some critics accused
the movie of being preachy, the actors are not openly very religious or
pro-life. Hudgens took the role because she wanted to prove she could
act in a serious part. She identified with Apple’s story of
transformation and spent two weeks living in a Several Sources Shelter in New Jersey to better relate to her character.

I found the movie heartfelt, raw, and truly compelling. It was worth
much more than the $8 I spent for a matinee ticket. I thought several
things in this film were rare compared to most of what comes out of
Hollywood these days.

Positive portrayal of a pro-life shelter
The home that Apple stayed in was based on the real-life Several Sources Shelter,
founded by Kathy DiFiore. Years ago, Kathy opened her home to a woman
and her baby. The need was so great that after a time, she left the
corporate world and opened up four residential shelters in New Jersey.
Filmaker and director Ron Krauss portrays the shelter as a loving home
where the girls are a family. Kathy’s character is seen as merciful,
protective, and devoted to her faith. It’s a welcome change of pace to
see a major movie give a dignified and honest picture of pro-life work
and a women’s shelter.

Sincere religious characters
It’s not easy to represent people of faith in a secular film, but Gimme Shelter
does it well. The priest is tenderhearted and concerned for Apples
safety. In one scene, Apple sits with him in a hospital chapel room and
reads aloud Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord.” According to an interview with National Review,
James Earl Jones, who played Father Frank McCarthy, actually donated
his film’s salary to the Several Sources Shelter. Jones studied to be a
priest in his youth, which may explain his willingness to act in this
role.

Realistic and relatable circumstances
The film touches on the issues of homelessness, teen pregnancy, drug
addiction, abandonment, fatherlessness, poverty, and abortion. Although
people in Hollywood sought to prevent
it from coming and crucified it afterwards, the story will connect with
people. A number of reviews called the film “unrealistic,” but director
Krauss decided to make it after meeting a teen mom who walked over 25
miles in a snowstorm just to reach the shelter. When she made it and saw
an available bed for her, she hugged Krauss. If that scene was in the
film, it might have been attacked as being “unrealistic” as well, but it
really happened. In the same sense, the things Apple deals with are
really happening to young women throughout our country. Some, like
Apple, will and do try everything they can to save themselves and the
lives of their children.

In summary, Gimme Shelter is a must-see film. Pro-lifers
should support this movie and invite others to see compassion displayed
on the big screen. Vanessa Hudgens said making this movie deepened her
own desire to become a mom.

“Being a mother is something that us women have been born into
existence to do. I’ve always felt I’ve had maternal instincts as all
females do. It’s something that’s ingrained inside of you ever since
you’re young and playing with Barbies. [Motherhood] is such a miracle
and so beautiful. I’ve always thought that.”

She goes on to tell the Mercury entertainment, “The scenes with my
baby were the best times ever. That precious little face! There’s
nothing more magical in the world than seeing a human being in the
tiniest package possible.”
I agree with Vanessa and thank her, director Ron Krauss, and the cast
for making this film. Bigger thanks to Kathy DiFore and her life-saving
work that inspired it.

In reality, the fact is that when a person does not stand for the dignity and equality of the unborn, he cannot consistently stand for the dignity and equality of everyone else. Obama doesn’t stand for who those children are, or what they will become if they are allowed to be born.

Until a child has bypassed all of the
threats with which he is faced prior to birth — no thanks to Obama’s
vehemently anti-life American policies — Obama does not recognize its
“inherent dignity and equality.” If dignity and equality were “inherent”
to “all human beings,” as he claims, then they exist indivisible from
the human being from the moment it becomes a human being (which, science
tells us, is at the moment of fertilization).

But, even the statement that “being born”
is a prior requirement to Obama assigning dignity and equality must be
qualified: even being born alive isn’t enough for Obama to respect a human being’s dignity. He made this clear when he voted againstthe Born Alive Infant Protection Act four times before taking office.

When Obama’s supposed belief in the
inherent dignity and equality of humans actually begins, in his mind, is
a mystery; but one thing is for certain: the part about it applying to
“every human being” is simply a lie.

Salon writer believes abortion is a human sacrifice and she’s okay with that

We hear about them quite often in the news – the mothers who
sacrificed themselves for their child. The women who put their own
well-being aside and do whatever it took to save their child. For
example: A mother who drown after saving her three young children from a river. The mother who protected her son with her life in an earthquake by using her body as a shield. The mother who threw herself in front of an oncoming car to save her child and lost her own life. And the mother who gave her life to cancer
rather than subject her unborn daughter to harmful medications. We call
these women brave. We call them selfless. We call them heroines. We say
they know the true meaning of motherhood.

So what do we say than of mothers like Mary Elizabeth Williams who
believe that fetuses are living human beings, that the fetuses they have
carried or will carry are their living babies, but in the same breath
announce that those children’s lives are not as valuable as their own?
Are they brave? Are they selfless? Do they know the true meaning of
motherhood? Williams, in a piece for Salon writes:

I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never
wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life
inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life. And that
doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice.

If life indeed begins at conception and that is no longer the
argument surrounding abortion, then does the argument become: When does
love begin? Does love begin with that first positive pregnancy test?
Does love begin only when a pregnancy is planned? Does love begin when
the child is born? Or does love begin when the child is able to return a
smile? When do we love someone enough to give value to their lives,
value above our own?

Or is the argument now: When do our lives gain value? Are we of value
when our mother sees us on the ultrasound image of the first time? Are
we of value when we first smile? First speak? Graduate from high school?
Earn a master’s degree? Or maybe when someone wants to marry us? And at
one point is our life valuable enough to someone that we are deemed
worthy of life?
Williams continues:

All life is not equal. […] a fetus can be a human life
without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides.
She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her
health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous
entity inside of her. Always.

First of all, that “entity” is her own child. And because her child
is still in her womb and is therefore at her mercy, should a woman have
the right to kill that child? Could the same apply to a newborn who is
at the complete mercy of her mother? Or a young child who lives in a
coma after an accident? Does the parent, or anyone, have the right to
end a life because of autonomy or lack thereof? If your grown child
could no longer physically care for herself, would you kill her?
Williams writes that we make choices about life all the time. We
decide if a criminal should live or die. We remove people from life
support. She reminds us that we are often at war. These are true. But
that doesn’t make them right. For the truly pro-life, the death penalty is just as wrong as abortion. And for the truly pro-life, starving an ill person such as Terri Schiavo to death is murder. And for the truly pro-life, war is not the answer.
Abortion isn’t the only focus of truly pro-life people. Just because a
person, such as a prisoner, or a person in a coma, or an unborn child is
not in control of their own lives does not mean we are therefore
allowed to treat them however we want. We are not able to abuse them by
taking drugs while pregnant or starving a prisoner or by chaining up a
person who has suffered brain damage. So why are we able to kill them?
If it is wrong to abuse them, why is it not wrong to kill them?
Williams goes on to write this gem:

If by some random fluke I learned today I was pregnant,
you bet your ass I’d have an abortion. I’d have the World’s Greatest
Abortion.

Just let it sink in: The World’s Greatest Abortion. I can only
imagine what that would entail: extra suction to make sure the baby is
totally dismembered and in the most pain possible? Two needles into the
belly to make certain that the baby’s heart stops super-fast? Twice as
much saline to burn that baby beyond recognition? An explosion of
confetti when the technician has accounted for all ten fingers and ten
toes?
Everything that Williams says is heartbreakingly shocking to me as a
mother and as a pro-life human being. She finishes up her post with
this:

[Abortion] saves lives not just in the most medically
literal way, but in the roads that women who have choice then get to go
down, in the possibilities for them and for their families. And I would
put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time —
even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is
indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.

Do you agree? If indeed we can all agree that fetuses are human life,
are we prepared to say that certain lives are worth sacrificing for our
own personal benefit? Are we prepared to say as a country, that our
freedoms don’t apply to all people, only a select few?
Are we prepared to allow pro-choice businesses and activists,
struggling after two years of abortion restricting laws, to erase the
exact reasons the United States of America was even created in the first
place? Are we prepared to once again legalize slavery? Are we prepared
to legalize human sacrifices? Because if you believe that a certain
single human life is worth killing for any reason, than you believe all
human life is worth killing – yours, your child’s, your grandchild’s.
For any reason. At any time.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Cosmo special: ‘How abortion changed our relationship’

Looks like Cosmo is running out of sex tips – and the end result isn’t pretty.

As a “Special Report” for February’s issue, Cosmopolitan published Liz
Welch’s piece entitled, “Our Choice: How Abortion Changed Our
Relationship.” Welch introduced her article, which profiled couples who
chose abortion, by speculating, “Abortion can test a relationship,
cement it, or end it as Cosmopolitan discovered in speaking to the four
couples here.”

Cosmopolitan, a “lifestylist for millions of fun, fearless females who want to be the best they can be in every area of their lives,” boasts more than three million subscribers.
“Ending a pregnancy,” Welch acknowledged, “is always a difficult
decision. But these women didn’t make it on their own.” She explained,
“Peek behind the doors of your local women’s health clinic and you might
see something surprising: men.” “Surprising,” because, well, abortion
mills like Planned Parenthood ooze with “between a woman and her doctor” rhetoric, not to mention the “Not in Her Shoes” campaign.

Speaking of Planned Parenthood, Welch lavishly quoted its president,
Cecile Richards. Richards gushed, “Men are much more involved in
decisions involving birth control and pregnancy as well as termination
these days.” As an introduction to Welch’s piece, she praised, “The more
people tell their personal stories the better. It gets these
conversations out of the political realm and into people’s real lives.”
Welch delved into these “real lives” by dividing the couples into four stories:

“We knew we weren’t ready for a baby.”

“It changed things so much that we split up.”

“We decided to get serious after the abortion.”

“It was the humane thing . . . and it devastated us.”

In the personal stories, Welch left footprints by highlighting the most vital quotes from the couples:

24-year-old Frisco: “I told Cindy [his girlfriend] I would support her
whatever decision she made, including being there for her and the child
if she wanted to keep it.”

23-year-old Cindy: “I want to be a mom one day. And I know it will be
the right time when the idea of getting pregnant gets me excited.”

24-year-old Kristina on her abortion at Planned Parenthood, “I
appreciated how normal they made everything. Goonies played in the
waiting room, and Beyonce was on the stereo during surgery.”

23-year-old Brittany on choosing abortion: “I called him to say I was
pregnant. We both cried, but then I said, ‘This is too emotional. I have
to be logical.’”

Brittany: “In the room, the doctor asked, ‘How many weeks along is
she?’ A nurse replied, ‘Diez,’ just as the anesthesia needle stuck into
my arm.”

But it was at the end of her article that Welch completely betrayed her
take on life and choice. She placed a blurb for post-abortion hotline
urging, “call the Exhale After-Abortion Talk Line for agenda-free counseling,” in order to connect to a “pro-voice” community (hmm, does that rhyme with anything?).This is “agenda-free,” according to Cosmo:List of Exhale Sponsors: Compton Foundation

Perhaps this is Cosmos’ sordid way of taking responsibility for its
content the rest of the year. When your fare is dedicated to telling
women how much and how good their sex should be – with a “Holiday Sextacular” piece, hyping strip clubs to women, and labeling waiting until a second date for sex as “100% outdated” – you should prepare them for possible consequences, and the feminist-left's approved solutions to them.Reprinted with permission from NewsBusters

Eric Munoz names his deceased daughter Nicole

FORT WORTH, TX, January 28, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com)
– He went to court to see that the life support systems keeping her
alive would be disconnected. Now, Erick Munoz has given his unborn
daughter a name before burying her.

"They think it was a female," he told the Associated Press of the 23-week-old child, whose death became assured after Munoz secured a judge's order ending hospital care for his pregnant wife last Friday.

Erick and Marlise Munoz holding baby Mateo.

He named the baby girl Nicole, his wife Marlise's middle name. The first child, Mateo, is about a year-and-a-half old.

Munoz found his 33-year-old wife, who was 14 weeks pregnant, collapsed
in their home on November 26. Shortly after being admitted to John Peter
Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, she was declared “brain dead,” which is
the definition of legal death in the state of Texas.
But, recognizing the humanity of the unborn child, Texas law provides
that a pregnant woman's body will be kept alive until her baby can be
delivered.
Munoz sued on January 14, saying that his wife did not wish to be kept alive by artificial means.
"Since my wife's death on Nov. 26, 2013, I have had to endure the pain
of watching my wife's dead body be treated as if she were alive,” he
said in a court filing.
Judge R.H. Wallace Jr. ruled on Friday that the mother was dead, her
unborn daughter was abnormal and not viable, and under Supreme Court
rulings women had the right to end pregnancies if they wished.

There was no report that Marlise wished to end her child's life, nor had she left any written directive about end-of-life-care.

However, the hospital removed Marlie Munoz from life support at 11:30 Sunday morning.
The case riveted the attention of the nation's pro-life movement, both
for the life of the child and the mother. In addition to exposing
potential difficulties with the state's laws, the Munoz case has shown
many the inexact nature of pronouncing a human being “brain dead.”Click "like" if you want to end abortion!

Wendy Davis

The subject became a subject of discussion in last night's debate
between four Republican hopefuls running for lieutenant governor of
Texas, all of whom agreed the hospital should have given Nicole Munoz a
chance to live.
Incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said, “I think we need to clarify the
law on this and permit this baby to be born.” State Senator Dan Patrick
said,
“We are born in the image of God, and whenever we have the opportunity
to preserve life, we should do that. That's our duty, as Christians.
That's our duty, I believe, as legislators." Agriculture Commissioner
Todd Staples said, “We need to make certain that as a society we are
protecting life.” Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson said the law needs
to change in 2015.

Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is seeking the governor's office
being vacated by Rick Perry, said in a statement that he would “continue
to work” to "protect both families and human life.”
His likely Democratic rival, Wendy Davis – who represents Fort Worth in
the state Senate – dissented from the Republican consensus. The fate of
both Marlise and Nicole Munoz "should be made by Mrs. Munoz's family,
in consultation with her doctors," she said in a statement.
The position is more in line with her record as a defender of abortion,
despite her attempt to moderate her image in November when she told an
audience, “I am pro-life.”

Editor’s note. The following are excerpts of remarks made today
on the floor of the House of Representatives by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ)
about H.R.7, No Taxpayer Funding Act.

Cong. Chris Smith (R-NJ)

HR 7 seeks to accomplish three important goals:

1. Make the Hyde Amendment and other current abortion funding prohibitions permanent;

2. Ensure that the Affordable Care Act faithfully conforms with the Hyde Amendment as promised by the President;

3. Provide full disclosure, transparency
and the prominent display of the extent to which any health insurance
plan on the exchange funds abortion.

Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States stood just 10 feet
from where I stand in September 2009 and told a joint session of
Congress that “under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund
abortion.”
On March 24, 2010, President Obama issued an executive order that
said the Affordable Care Act “maintains current Hyde Amendment
restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to
newly created health insurance exchanges.”
We now know that’s not true at all. The ACA does not extend Hyde
Amendment restrictions to the newly created health insurance exchanges.

As my colleagues will recall, the Hyde Amendment has two parts. It
prohibits direct funding for abortion and bans funding for any insurance
coverage that includes abortion except in the cases of rape, incest or
to save the life of the mother.

Under the Affordable Care Act, massive amounts of public funds in the
form of tax credits – $796 billion in direct spending over 10 years,
according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) – will pay for
insurance plans, many, perhaps most of which will include elective
abortion. That massively violates the Hyde Amendment.
We have learned that every single Obamacare plan in Connecticut and Rhode Island includes abortion on demand.

In my own state of New Jersey, my staff and I have learned after a
great deal of work that of the 31 plans offered in the state, at least
14 plans subsidize abortion on demand. Yet none of the plans make this
information available to the consumer shopping online. This is the case
in state after state.
To further understand how the ACA expands public funding for
abortion, my colleagues don’t have to look any further than the DC
Health Link—our own portal for health insurance. Of the 112 health
insurance plans available to members of congress and staff only nine
exclude elective abortion. 103 plans—over 90%–subsidize abortion on
demand. About 75% of our insurance premiums are subsidized by the
taxpayer so the taxpayer is clearly being compelled to subsidize
elective abortions.
Mr. Speaker, since some health insurance plans offered on the
exchange have already been purchased, HR7—just like the Hyde
Amendment—makes the elimination of public funding for abortion except in
the cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother, applicable
in the ACA next year—beginning on January 1, 2015, at the start of a
new contract year.
So in the meantime, in order to ensure robust transparency, HR7 adds a
major new provision requiring full disclosure and prominent display of
“the extent of coverage” of abortion, if any, and separate disclosure of
any abortion surcharge.

Obamacare requires premium payers to be assessed a separate abortion
surcharge every month to pay for abortions. We have learned that
consumers may never know they are paying the surcharge, despite
assurances to the contrary when the ACA was passed.
In 2009, Senator Ben Nelson said

“if you are receiving Federal
assistance to buy insurance, and if that plan has any abortion coverage,
the insurance company must bill you separately, and you must pay
separately from your own personal funds–perhaps a credit card
transaction, your separate personal check, or automatic withdrawal from
your bank account–for that abortion coverage. Now, let me say that
again. You have to write two checks: one for the basic policy and one
for the additional coverage for abortion.”

However, research published by the National Right to Life Committee
(NRLC) indicates that insurance carriers are not actually billing the
surcharge separately at all. In fact, Gretchen Borchelt, director of
state reproductive health policy at the National Women’s Law Center,
told the Huffington Post that “we used to talk about it as being two
checks that the consumer would have to write because of the segregation
requirements, but that’s not the way it’s being implemented.”

Finally, Mr. Speaker, because abortion brutally dismembers,
decapitates or chemically poisons an unborn child to death, Americans
have consistently demanded that public funds not pay for abortion.
A huge majority—well over 60%–according to most polls show that women
and men in this country don’t want to be complicit in abortion by
subsidizing it. A December 2009 Quinnipiac poll found 72% opposed to
“allowing abortions to be paid for by public funds under a health reform
bill.”
Another poll by International Communications Research asked “If the
choice were up to you, would you want your own insurance policy to
include abortion?” 69% of women said no!
Mr. Speaker, that’s because an ever growing number of people
recognize that abortion isn’t health care—it kills babies and harms
women.

We live in an age of ultrasound imaging—the ultimate window to the
womb and the child who resides there. We are in the midst of a fetal
health care revolution, an explosion of benign interventions designed to
diagnose, treat and cure the precious lives of these youngest patients.
HR 7 will help save lives and will reduce abortions.

The Judiciary Committee Report accompanying HR 7 suggests that the
Hyde Amendment has saved over a million children because 1 in 4 women
who would have procured an abortion don’t go through with it if public
funding isn’t available.

Remee Jo Lee, after John Andrew Welden was sentenced to 13 years and eight months.

NRL News Today has covered the case of John Andrew Welden, its many
twists and turns, all the way back to last May when he was indicted on a
federal charge that he murdered his own unborn child.
As our readers know, last September Welden cut a deal to avoid a
murder charge made possible by the federal Unborn Victims of Violence
Act– legislation that was instigated by NRLC and signed into law by
President George W. Bush in 2004. If he’d been convicted on that charge,
Welden faced a mandatory life sentence.

Then, at the last possible moment, the judge decided he needed to
address the possibility (however slight) that the misoprostol (Cytotec)
Welden had tricked Remee Jo Lee into taking had not caused her to lose
her 6-7 week old unborn baby.As we reported, after listening
to experts for two days, U.S. District Judge Richard A. Lazzara came to
the only conclusion he could have. That the one 200 microgram dose of
Cytotec did exactly what Welden intended it to: aborted Lee’s baby boy.
Yesterday Judge Lazzara sentenced the 28-year-old Welden to 13 years
and eight months on charges of product tampering and conspiracy to
commit mail fraud. That was the sentence originally agreed to by
prosecutors and defense attorney Todd Foster.

Most of the stories I read about Monday’s sentencing were matter of
fact or snide (Welden quoted the Bible, for example, Jeremiah 29:11, to
be specific).
Tampa Bay Times reporter Patty Ryan wrote an entirely different story
and included the statements of both Ms. Lee and Welden at the end. Be
sure to take five minutes and read her extraordinary account at
www.tampabay.com/news/courts/criminal/john-andrew-welden-faces-sentencing-in-tampa-abortion-pill-case/2162858.
You read stories about boyfriends behaving horrifically towards their
pregnant girlfriends, up to and including murdering them. We’ve run
many stories about jerks who have connived their girlfriends into taking
abortion-inducing drugs. Tragically, the availability of drugs that act
as abortifacients makes this probably a fairly routine occurrence about
which we only occasionally hear.
What Ms. Ryan accomplishes is to bring a human face to this tragedy, to show us the ripple effects of this abortion.
I will leave it to the reader to judge how sincere Welden’s apology
was. For what it’s worth, he told the court that he accepted full
responsibility for his actions and asked for forgiveness.
Ryan wrote

“His voice sounded beaten and sorrowful.

“Hers sounded hurt and angry.”

Lee was not in a forgiving mood.

“Everybody wants to tell you what to do,” she told Judge Lazzara.
“The only thing I want you to do is show Andrew the same amount of mercy
he showed me during my pregnancy.”
I remember the first time she spoke publicly–on CNN’s New Day program (see “I Just Wanted My Pregnancy”: Women duped into aborting her baby gives first interview to CNN’s “New Day”). She said,“Nothing else matters in the world to me. Everything I thought
was important before this took a really big change when this blessing
came into my life. …There’s no words for the horror I wake up to every
day, that this is my reality. There’s no escaping it, there’s no turning
it off.”
And it was the depths of Ms. Lee’s loss of the baby she had already
named Memphis that Ryan conveyed in her account. I don’t to lose the
power of the narrative, so I’m going to offer this extended quote. Ryan
wrote

Welden may have a dismal future, she said, but Memphis has no future.

“He hurt me really badly,” she
testified. “More so than anyone else in this entire world. He took away
the most precious thing I could have ever had and that was my baby, our
baby.”

She felt death inside of her, she said.

At one point, her remarks turned into a sort of eulogy for the baby she didn’t get to have.

Memphis, she said, filled her every breath with meaning.

Memphis taught her the importance of family.

Memphis taught her how strong she was.

Memphis taught her about self-respect.

“I never want to forget Memphis. I
loved being pregnant. I wish that Memphis were here. I need him so much.
But he is here. He’s always in my heart. He’s with my family and I
think he’s here, he’s what’s brought us all together.”

There was hurt everywhere in the courtroom. Being the dad of an adult
son myself, I was especially moved by what Welden’s dad, Dr. Stephen
Welden, said to the judge. Ryan reports that Dr. Welden wondered aloud
if he should have done something differently with his son.
“If there is such a thing and I didn’t do it,” he said, voice dissolving into a sob, “then I owe everybody an apology.”

[1] Welden told Ms. Lee that his physician father said that she had
an infection and he was bringing her antibiotics. After scratched
identifying markings off the Cytotec pills, Welden then put the
fraudulent label on the empty pill bottle and put the altered Cytotec
pills inside. Welden “also affixed a second label to the bottle reading,
‘Amoxicillin: 125mg oral tablet,’ a common antibiotic,” according to
reporter Elaine Silvestrini.

National Right to Life Applauds U.S. House
Vote to End Abortion Subsidies Under Obamacare and Enact Permanent,
Government-Wide Hyde Amendment

WASHINGTON
– The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) today commended the 227
members of the U.S. House of Representatives who voted to pass the
landmark No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (H.R. 7), but directed
sharp criticism at the 188 House members who voted against the bill, and
at President Obama, whose White House issued a veto threat.

At the time Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, an array of
long-established laws, including the Hyde Amendment, had created a
nearly uniform policy that federal programs did not pay for abortion or
subsidize health plans that included coverage of abortion, with narrow
exceptions. However, key provisions of the 2010 Obamacare health law
sharply departed from that longstanding policy. Among other
objectionable provisions, the Obamacare law authorized massive federal
tax subsidies to assist many millions of Americans to purchase private
health plans that will cover abortion on demand.

Some Obamacare defenders originally insisted that the new
premium-subsidy program was not really “federal funding” of abortion
because a “separate payment” would be required to cover the costs of the
abortion coverage, which NRLC dismissed as a mere “bookkeeping
gimmick.” The debate over the significance of the “separate payment” has
been rendered rather academic because the Obama Administration is
ignoring the two-payment requirement – a development that few
journalists or “factcheckers” have taken note of, despite the previous
credence given to the “two-payment” gimmick. See “Bait-and-Switch: The
Obama Administration’s Flouting of Key Part of Nelson ‘Deal’ on
ObamaCare,” http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/12/bait-and-switch-the-obama-adminstrations-flouting-of-key-part-of-nelson-deal-on-obamacare/.

H.R. 7, sponsored by Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Dan Lipinski
(D-Il.), would codify the principles of the Hyde Amendment on a
permanent, government-wide basis, applicable to both longstanding
federal health programs and to the new programs created by Obamacare.
Under the bill, health plans that cover elective abortions would not
qualify for federal subsidies, although such plans could still be sold
to those who wish to purchase them with personal funds.
On today’s vote on passage, the bill was supported by 221 Republicans
and six Democrats. It was opposed by one Republican and 187 Democrats,
many of whom echoed attacks on the bill found in a veto threat issued by
the White House.

“The White House veto threat demonstrates yet again that President
Obama is engaging in establishing massive federal subsidies for
abortion on demand, notwithstanding his evasions and denials,” said National Right to Life President Carol Tobias. “The 188 House members who voted against the bill will be firmly marked as supporters of federal funding for elective abortion.”

Founded in 1968, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the
federation of 50 state right-to-life affiliates and more than 3,000
local chapters, is the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots pro-life
organization. Recognized as the flagship of the pro-life movement, NRLC
works through legislation and education to protect innocent human life
from abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide and euthanasia

Pro-abortion President Obama threatens to veto H.R. 7

By Dave Andrusko

President Barack ObamaPhoto credit: AP

Hmmm, let’s see. Sun rises in the east; winter colder than summer;
Washington, DC is closer to Baltimore, Maryland than to Hong
Kong—certainties whose givenness is rivaled only by the sure knowledge
that President Obama would threaten to veto H. R. 7—the No Taxpayer
Funding for Abortion Act set to be voted on in the House of
Representatives today.
But, a friend of the President might respond, there is no need for
H.R. 7! Didn’t Mr. Obama, going all the way back to March 2010, assure
the American people that “The Act [ObamaCare] maintains current Hyde
Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those
restrictions to the newly created health insurance exchanges”?

The President and his allies in the House and Senate want the
d
iscussion to veer off onto number of rabbit trails by insisting that
H.R. 7 does things that it plainly does not. We focus on what the
legislation actually does.

HR. 7 would codify the principles of the Hyde Amendment on a
permanent, government-wide basis, with respect both to longstanding
federal health programs and to the new programs created by the Obamacare
law.
A lot is at stake. As NRLC wrote in a letter to the House, “A
Member’s vote on H.R. 7 will essentially define his or her position, for
or against federal funding of abortion, for the foreseeable future.”
NRL News Today will post a story later this afternoon after the House vote